Consumer Alert: Acetone-Free Is Not Always Hazard-Free

Odorless nail polish remover by Honeybee Gardens may be acetone-free — but not danger-free

If you're looking for a safer, acetone-free nail polish remover, Honeybee Gardens Odorless Nail Polish Remover might seem like a good bet, with its aloe, horsetail-extract, and vitamin E–enriched formula. But what you are getting along with those ingredients is exposure to a chemical that could be just as hazardous — if not more so.

During a recent evaluation of nail polish products, the scientists at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute discovered an ingredient in the Honeybee Gardens Odorless Nail Polish Remover that concerned them. The packaging promotes the product as botanically enriched, and free of fragrance, color, and acetone, but it does not state that acetone — the conventional solvent in nail polish remover known to be harmful — has been replaced with a potentially more harmful chemical: methanol.

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The proof: Methanol is toxic at lower doses than acetone. Inhaling or swallowing acetone can lead to skin, eye, and respiratory-tract irritation, coughing, dizziness, headache, depression, narcosis (chemically induced stupor), and unconsciousness. Exposure to methanol by inhaling, swallowing, or absorbing it through your skin can lead to all those conditions as well as nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, blindness, coma, and even death.

Consumers need to be aware that products promoted as seemingly "natural" are not necessarily hazard free, says Birnur Aral, Ph.D., director of the Beauty, Health, and Environmental Sciences Lab at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute. Women looking for acetone-free nail products need to check the labels and confirm that the products are water-based and do not contain methanol.